In 2021, my team and I were among the first explorers of standardizing haptic technology, or touch based feedback, at Comcast. Although haptic feedback had been included in some of our products already on the market, there was little consistency in implementing haptics across Comcast teams. We identified an opportunity to standardize this by creating a living haptic document—a toolkit for all of the thousands of designers, developers, and product managers who implemented haptics at the company. Our goal was to capture Comcast’s haptic strategy and demonstrate real-world usage through an app.
RESEARCH I led the extensive ideative process to determine where haptic feedback would have the most impact. In a series of workshops, I brought together a cross-functional team of designers, developers, and product managers, and held working sessions using activities like affinity diagramming and dot voting. This collaborative process helped us prioritize the toolkit’s essential components, like providing guidelines, points of contact, and access to prototypes, ensuring it met users' needs from the start.
V1 OF THE TOOLKIT Using Protopie, an app that allows one to develop and test haptic responses, I designed a haptic app to test and validate patterns used alongside visual and sonic UI elements in Xfinity experiences. This provided a hands-on demonstration for leadership, emphasizing haptics’ value.
After determining prioritization and alignment, I began working on an initial draft of the toolkit. We identified the following subjects as foundational and began fleshing them out:
Goals
Intended users
Definitions
Guiding questions
Design Guidance
Notifications
Strategies
Frameworks
Strategic Rationale
Library of existing patterns
Toolkit of external resources
USER TESTING We wanted to see just how impactful the haptic responses were, and if users prefer lighter, medium, or heavier haptics. I drafted questions and recruited our participants: a control group with sighted Xfinity customers, primarily between ages 50-65 and a group of low- and no-vision users with the same characteristics. Surprisingly, most participants couldn’t distinguish when haptics were present, and had no preference for the intensity of the feedback, showing minimal impact on the user experience. This unexpected result reshaped our understanding of how we should approach haptics in our designs— nice-to-haves instead of critical requirements.
KEY TAKEAWAYS From a sensory designer's perspective, I was excited to work with and research haptic effects. Haptics offer subtle feedback that often goes unnoticed in apps, but have become crucial elements in some technologies, like video game controllers. "Meaningfulness” of haptic feedback may differ widely from person to person. Ultimately, while haptics can add clarity, at the moment, they can’t replace the utility of visual or auditory feedback.
